RE: Is More Sex Indicative of an Average Intelligence? by erh.germany

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· @erh.germany · (edited)
$0.03
> Now you're being a dualist! I think you tricked you, or your brain tricked your brain, but saying that you tricked your brain is kinda strange to me!

Good that it's strange to you, otherwise you would not be irritated, which I find the best way to produce 

a mental stumble. 

I'll put it another way: The biochemical processes that flow through my body as I listen to the information of a client (who is becoming very emotional right now!) trigger impulsive sensations in me that are now reaching my brain. I'm almost giving in to these impulses, but at the very last moment my consciousness catches "me" (noticing pulse, my brain, which is already firing the neurons) expressing such anger (because something the client said, for example, reminded me of something else that provoked me and raised my pulse). 

Being "angry" ("annoyed" was the wrong term, many things get lost in translation, unfortunately) is an impulse, it's the aggressive impulse when anger arises (heart pulse goes up), which is *not* my volatile decision as I often feel it comes over me. Now, in the course that anger comes over me and I know that this anger won't help the session - other than I want to use a faigened anger to deliver a certain kind of message - because my client would get aroused him/herself, I can only use my free will to decide *against* anger and for being calm. 

If my first emotional state had been calm (as you say "polite" which is a difference), then I would not have to oppose it, other I choose that it would be a good strategy (as you described it). 

Anger, fear and paralysis are impulses. The reactions to them are Fight, Flight or Freeze, as we know. Such spontaneous impulses, I cannot simply determine, because they come over me, whether I want to or not. Somebody yells at you and you get angry.
You hear a creepy noise in the dark forest and you feel fear.
You're so scared, you're gonna freeze. 

But I would like to ask you: whenever you noticed you were about to show a certain degree of aggressiveness, did you decide otherwise because you knew it would going to cause some damage? Like, for instance, deciding not to yell to a child. For me, this is a very strong experience of practicing free will. How is it for you?

Yes, free will I did describe with this particular example because this expresses the struggle against so many things which influence my free will (Biology, culture, socialization, the planet, the Universe).
πŸ‘  
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@alexander.alexis ·
$0.05
> whenever you noticed you were about to show a certain degree of aggressiveness, did you decide otherwise because you knew it would going to cause some damage? Like, for instance, deciding not to yell to a child. For me, this is a very strong experience of practicing free will. How is it for you?

Well it happened to me today, so it's fresh in my mind! I merely used my past experience - I told myself that I will regret it if I explode, and I will feel guilty, and the whole day will be ruined, and I will hurt a person I care about and why should I?, and externalizing anger never led to anything good in the past, etc.

So it's quite clear that a 'machine' that didn't have all this knowledge (past experience) encoded in its memory, would act otherwise, like I did in the past.

This is just an example of an instance - in other cases maybe the reasoning will be different. But there will always be a cause. Just because I'm not aware of it, doesn't mean it's not there. Believing there's no causes, or that the cause is 'free will' makes no sense to me: what caused my free will to do A and not B? There must be some answer, and if there is, then my free will isn't free :P

I think when we feel something taking over us, it's simply that there's mainly just one thing influencing us with nothing going against it. Once many things are being weighed, we feel we are more 'in charge'. But that's an illusion. When I add 2 + 2 the answer comes automatically, as though 'it's not me' that gave the answer. When I add 359 + 4795 the answer requires more deliberate thought, and so I feel like I'm using more 'free will' to do it. But both are the same, I think.

Another (slightly sci fi) way to look at it, is to ask whether you would make the same decision with your client if I went back in time. So let's say I, Alex, invent a time machine, and go back in time, to see if Erica will always remain calm. And Erica does, let's say, always remain calm, however many times I go back. There is the question: why does Erica always make the same decision? What is *making* this to happen? (Maybe the fact that, at moment X, Erica is always the same Erica, so she is determined to always make the same decision, since nothing has changed in the wiring of her brain?) There must be some law behind it, like pricking a balloon with a needle always makes it pop. Surely Erica also has a point at which she will not be able to control her anger. Not much free will there!
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@erh.germany ·
$0.03
I do believe in free will. Maybe you are going to reconsider if there is really nothing like it. Here is a photo of ThΓ­ch Quang Duc, who burned himself:

https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmaPMAxUT9X9H8b19MA3koduxFMVd1FKUmiP2Du6gRgkk4/640px-Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c_self-immolation.jpg

Von Malcolm Browne for the Associated Press - Immediate source:[1]For further info see: http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-I-VNM-aphs019555-VIETNAM-MONK-PROTEST/a344206cdb5a490e9fceb1e1c2ebbefc/1/1, Gemeinfrei, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54211800

I apologize, this was serious. I hope, I do not offend you with this. But I felt that when you say there is nothing like a free will, I thought that there is. 

-----------

The time journey and what is the cause of the cause- it's interesting to think and maybe I will reply at another time.
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@alexander.alexis ·
$0.05
I don't take offense. That is a highly brave action. The picture is so iconic that it even looks 'beautiful' even though it's very tragic.

But I don't see how it relates to free will. And it's unlikely I'll reconsider it since it's one of my 'specialties' for more than a decade! In fact I consider it a fact that both science and philosophy have proven, quite independently of each other, that there is no free will.  It's just a remnant of our belief in the soul, basically. Once you understand that everything is material, and our brain is made of matter, and consciousness entirely depends on it, then the rest follows. Maybe a stone has no feelings and a human has feelings, but with determinism it's different: there is no sum that is greater than its parts. If material particles have 0% free will, then it doesn't matter how many of them you stack together and in what order, you will never get something that has 1% free will. There are some things that all material objects have in common, like having a position in space and time for instance. One of those things is being 100% determined.

There are famous free will experiments in psychology that you probably read about, but recently there was a new one (of the same kind) that a friend posted on fb: 
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-03-brains-reveal-choices-aware.html
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@erh.germany ·
$0.03
If I follow your argumentation that any decision I make willingly is ultimately only triggered by some causal mysterious other reason, then I would have to assume that man is nothing but a machine and all causalities could be traced at some point. 

I call this denial of what science itself could actually claim to represent as great knowledge: That the identification of causes, as soon as they were found, again resulted in new and even more intensive searches for further causes, and that in this way we can go on indefinitely without ever finding a real causal origin. 

Unless you believe that the origin of all life will be found by man. 

But that is not a science, but a belief. 

Furthermore, you don't seem to attach any special importance to your personal experience, because such everyday decisions, like taking the second exit on the highway instead of the third, or calming down instead of getting excited, are simply insignificant events. In fact, human everyday life consists almost exclusively of such simple events and only in movies, for example, do you have to make decisions about life and death. So does this mean that it doesn't really matter if I follow your reasoning about what people do?  

It seems almost as if you believe in the power of the predetermined destiny and nothing a human being does has any influence whatsoever on this already determined mechanics, a kind of stupid universal law that marks our path. 

Is then human compassion basically worthless feeling and only pure imagination? 

Of course you are right, every encounter that is limited to a temporal context contains innumerable other possibilities and these are infinite the larger one draws the temporal context frame. But in second-by-second interactions, as they happen between people, the only meaningful and feasible volitional decision is basically of importance, since according to Buddhism this is probably the most effective way to show one' s will. Everything that moves outside this framework is already past again and only still future. That is why Buddhist doctrine teaches the present moment as the only real one. In so far as I declare this present to be an illusion, I deprive myself, so to speak, of my only possibility to exert influence and leave others to control the situation. 

It seems that we do not agree on this question. I believe, however, that an agreement is unnecessary, for if we were to meet in physical life, the conduct of such conversations would not be the basis of our understanding, but rather we would be integrated into a context.
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@alexander.alexis ·
$0.05
> causal mysterious other reason

It's not mysterious in a magical sense. It's only mysterious because we don't know, cos there's so many things... If you toss sand in the air, can Science predict the trajectory of each grain of sand? No. But we *know* it's all determined. Because nothing else makes sense. If something isn't determined, then it's magic. And it's easy to say 'it's magic', but actually we have no idea what that would even mean.

> man is nothing but a machine

Well we are a very complicated machine. An admirable machine. Not all machines are the same. So we are not just another machine!

> I call this denial of what science itself could actually claim to represent as great knowledge: That the identification of causes, as soon as they were found, again resulted in new and even more intensive searches for further causes, and that in this way we can go on indefinitely without ever finding a real causal origin.

Those are two different things. I can know that A was caused by B, without knowing what caused B. I could then say that A is 100% determined, even though I'm unaware of the ultimate cause of everything.

So yeah, you are right, it's a problem in philosophy: does everything go back infinitely? Does infinite causation that never ends make sense? Is infinite causation better and more sensible than saying that everything started with the First Cause? (usually identified as God). Basically, there are only two games in town: infinite causation and First Cause (or many First Causes!) But, like I said, this has nothing to do with whether human actions specifically are determined.

> the power of the predetermined destiny 

Fate and destiny have nothing to do with determinism. Fate is like the movies Final Destination. It's like, whatever you do, something will push you, in increasingly intricate ways, toward what was meant to happen, toward what was 'written'. Fate is also necessarily against randomness, whereas determinism, strictly speaking, is not. Determinism is simply the idea that if I toss a coin, whether it lands head or tails is determined by the laws of nature, so that if I knew everything that came before the toss, I could tell you what will happen after I toss the coin. It's like that article I sent in my previous reply. Scientists use science to predict what you'll choose before you choose it. And we're only getting started, cos our science is still so primitive.

> nothing a human being does has any influence whatsoever on this already determined mechanics

But why are you separating the human being from the mechanics? Does it make sense to say 'nothing a clock does has any influence on what time it shows'? No, what the clock does has 100% influence on what the clock shows! You do what you do, but what you do is 100% influenced by all your nature and nurture, the brain that you inherited + all the information that was received by that brain since the moment of its birth.

> Is then human compassion basically worthless feeling and only pure imagination?

I don't see how this is related. Human compassion is not at all worthless.

> In so far as I declare this present to be an illusion, I deprive myself, so to speak, of my only possibility to exert influence and leave others to control the situation.

Well this is a contradiction. You are basically saying that (if you don't have free will) all matter is determining you to do X, and therefore you feel you are powerless. But you just said that matter determines you! And you are matter too. So you are not powerless! You are affecting other things just like everything else.

Basically, I think it's just a psychological reaction, let's say like if I tell someone they don't have a soul. All the things you appear to be worried about have nothing to do with determinism and free will. You get to keep all those things, and add knowledge on top! You don't lose anything, and you gain much! It's interesting because you're also a psychologist/therapist, and I would think that your profession would believe that people can be influenced, and that because of that we may both help them and learn about them. If people's actions happen because of some mysterious 'free will', then psychology is doomed, and there's no reason to ask questions such as "why did Jane do X?" Just put them in jail or something and never answer the question and never try to help them.
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